For better or for worse, we now live in a world where hacking is the norm. It's in our daily news stories, entertainment, governments, businesses, and homes. While it has become more and more prevalent, it has also become easier. A great deal of attacks take very little technical knowledge as scripts can be found and used by even a novice. For the technically savvy hacker, the stakes are very high as more and more systems can be compromised for financial or political gain.

In a world where hacking has become so easy that a child could do it, it is absolutely essential that organizations verify their own level of protection by having their networks tested using the same tools that cybercriminals use against them. However, the basic usage of these tools is not sufficient knowledge to be an effective information-security professional. It is absolutely critical that information-security professionals understand the techniques that are being employed by these tools and why these techniques are able to exploit various vulnerabilities in a network or system. A knowledge of the basic underlying principles that explain how these common attack tools work enables one to effectively use them, but more importantly, it also contributes to one's ability to effectively identify such attacks and defend against them.

The intention of this book is to enumerate and explain the use of common attack tools that are available on the Kali Linux platform, but more importantly, this book also aims to address the underlying principles that define why these tools work. In addition to addressing the highly functional tools integrated into Kali Linux, we will also create a large number of Python and Bash scripts that can be used to perform similar functions and/or to streamline existing tools.

Ultimately, the intention of this book is to help forge stronger security professionals through a better understanding of their adversary.